


home before dark

by Luna



Category: Zone Blanche | Black Spot (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-02-01 04:23:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna/pseuds/Luna
Summary: "This is the part where I ask how it's going, and you say everything's fine.""Everything's fine," Laurene says. She has the nerve to sound surprised that Leila would ask. Like,it's all right, Ma, I'm only bleeding.But Leila isn't her mother, and she isn't her doctor tonight.
Relationships: Leïla Barami/Laurène Weiss
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	home before dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/gifts).

> Takes place following series 2.

Leila plays her music loud when she's leaving the hospital, loud and fast and heavy on the bass. Dance or dubstep or thrash metal, vibrations shaking the car and making her hips rock in the driver's seat. Sometimes she speeds right through Villefranche and into the forest, drumming on the steering wheel, singing along until she's hoarse. Until the music blasts her mind clear. Then maybe there's a chance she'll sleep.

No chance tonight. Leila parks in Laurene's driveway and takes a deep breath. Blows it out in an exasperated sigh. She's not used to hesitating, doesn't like it in herself. She cuts the music off with the engine and marches up to the house.

She knocks half a dozen times before Laurene answers. She says nothing, just stands in the open doorway, blank expression as if Leila's a stranger, trying to sell her something she doesn't want. She looks paler than ever in the early twilight, cheekbones too prominent, the fine skin below her eyes tinged blue. Leila wants to wrap a coat around her.

“Where’s Cora?” she says, instead. 

Laurene tilts her head toward the back of the house. When Leila listens, she hears the beat first, then the trill of Rihanna's voice. Cora has her music cranked up, too, to drown out the ringing in her ears.

“I brought these for her,” Leila says, holding out a paper bag. It's the clothes Cora wore to the quarry, torn and smoky from the explosion. She'd dived out of danger like the heroine of an action movie. Only movies never warn you about the hearing loss, the petrochemical fumes, denim fibers embedded in scraped skin. Cora had toughed it out, gritted teeth against the pain: her mother's daughter.

“I’ll wash them,” Laurene says, taking the bag without touching Leila’s hands. She disappears down the hall, and Leila wanders into the living room. All the lamps are lit, pushing the shadows deep into the corners. The house feels small, low ceilings and huge windows. Everything outside is gray: the pines, the slopes, the sky. From here, Leila can't see where the forest has been scarred.

_Someone's going to pay for that,_ she thinks. _No, we all are._

She'd cut a tiny swatch from Cora’s jeans, photographed the tread of her boots. She's not burying the evidence. But she won't be sending it to the lab anytime soon. They don't need any more strangers coming into Villefranche, no more investigators and no more victims.

"Was there anything else?" 

Leila turns, leans back against the cold glass. "This is the part where I ask how it's going, and you say everything's fine."

"Everything's fine," Laurene says. She has the nerve to sound surprised that Leila would ask. Like, _it's all right, Ma, I'm only bleeding._ But Leila isn't her mother, and she isn't her doctor tonight.

"Well, I've had a rotten day," Leila says. "Offer me a drink."

Laurene turns for the kitchen, too obediently. Leila follows a few steps behind her, watches her open the refrigerator and stare into the cool, lifeless light.

"You weren’t in to see Teddy Bear this weekend," Leila points out.

Laurene whips around. "He's supposed to be going home! Is something wrong?"

Leila holds up a placating hand. "I only wondered if you're avoiding him, too. Then I wouldn't have to be insulted. Or wonder if I smell funny." Laurene rolls her eyes, annoyed, a flush of color in her cheeks. At least it's a reaction. "Now get the beer and let's talk.'

"Let's go to Sabine's and not talk," Laurene says.

"No deal."

Laurene takes the six-pack of Ardwen from the refrigerator, opens a bottle and pushes it across the counter. Leila takes a long drink, as if it's going to help her, liquid courage. She'd need a lot more for that. Tequila at the very least. She pushes her hair back from her face. Laurene's opened a bottle for herself, but she isn't drinking. Just waiting.

"I know you don’t tell me everything," Leila says. "You tell Teddy Bear a piece, Hermann a piece, Bertrand…Siriani, I suppose. Though I am insulted if you’d rather talk to _Siriani._”

Laurene's mouth twitches at the corner, but she doesn't smile. “I need his help.”

"And not mine?"

For the first time all night, she looks at Leila as if she can actually see her. "You've done enough, haven't you?"

Leila flinches, hides it by throwing back some more beer. Okay. No more hesitation. "You know, there are some doctors who can't handle giving bad news," she says. "Me, I think it's a kindness to be direct. I tell people they've lost a mother, a husband, that their own hearts and lungs are failing--and since this is Villefranche, it gets worse. Hell, I did eight autopsies last week. But giving you those DNA results--" and she tips her bottle up, but it's empty. She swallows hard, anyway. "That was the hardest part."

Laurene sets her untouched beer aside and crosses her arms, thin flannel shirt slipping off one shoulder. "You shouldn't have told me," she says, barely above a whisper.

"I can't lie to you, Laurene," Leila says.

"I never asked you to compare Sylvain's DNA with mine."

"Something kept you alive in those woods," Leila says. She still has nightmares of Laurene coming into the hospital naked, bullet in her chest, strange plant juices on her skin. "You survived out there, and so did this Sylvain. The person you've been looking for, all this time--"

"He's _not_ the one I'm looking for," Laurene hisses.

"Shoot the messenger if you must. At least you have a new piece of the puzzle." 

Laurene hugs herself tighter. "I don't want this fucking puzzle."

Her jaw is set sharply, a wet glimmer in the dark of her eyes. That look only she has, so strong and fragile at the same time. Delicate and dangerous, like thin ice over deep water.

Leila puts her empty bottle down, wipes her hands on her jeans, and steps closer to Laurene, holding her gaze. "I'm sorry," she says. "I'll destroy the report. I sent your sample in blind; the lab doesn't have your name. No one else knows, and I'll never say a word. And you can stop speaking to me if that helps, unless you need a doctor, or a coroner. But it won't help, will it?"

Laurene looks off toward the window, reflected lamplight and a sky the color of ash. "No," she says, finally. "It's too late. It's in my blood."

Leila hears the hitch in Laurene's breathing and feels her own throat tighten, her eyes stinging as if the room were filled with smoke. She did this--it's not her fault, but the damage is done, and it's irreversible. She should leave Laurene alone, let her rest. Leila won't sleep, but she could drive over to the El Dorado, do a few shots and leave with the first person who asks her.

Another soulmate.

She and Laurene were lovers for a summer, a few years back, before the murder rate picked up. It wasn't built to last. They would just close the bar down and stumble together into the pre-dawn dark, sweet with the smell of clover and the first scraps of birdsong overlaying their laughter. Skinnydipping in the clear green lake, warming themselves on each other, long rambling talks between long rambling kisses. Tangling in a spare bed in the hospital, or the backseat of a car parked under the trees. Then work got busier, and Leila started hooking up with a football player in Rennes, and by winter, it felt like they had always and only been friends. 

But Leila's never forgotten how it began. Laurene was standing over the jukebox at Sabine's, her eyes bright and wet, hesitating over some sad song, and Leila had reached out and wrapped her arms around her waist--not drunk, of course, but tipsy enough that she couldn't pretend to care what anybody thought, looking on--leaned her cheek against Laurene's and said, _girl, play something we can dance to._

Leila reaches for her now, and just like it was then, Laurene melts into her arms, buries her face in Leila's hair. She's crying, Leila can feel the shudder running through her, but there's no sound, only the distant thrum of Cora's music.

"All this time--" Laurene sniffles, catches her breath.

It takes Leila a second to realize that she's not thinking about their summer. She pulls back gently, keeping her hands on Laurene's shoulders. Laurene tries to smile at her, and it's terrible. 

"The man I was looking for, in the woods--I never thought he was looking for _me_. In the beginning, I mean." Laurene wipes her nose on the cuff of her shirt. "It was my All-Nighter. I was Cora's age, Marion's age, you know? You think you're invincible."

Leila nods. She was that kind of girl, too, fearless and so easy to hurt. 

"I thought it happened because I was alone," Laurene says. "Wrong place, wrong time. I never wondered why it happened to me."

"God," Leila says. She strokes Laurene's collarbone with her thumb. "If I'd known--"

"He was there with me. Sylvain. If he's my--" The word brother forms on her lips. She fumbles behind her, comes up with her beer bottle and holds it for a moment to one swollen eyelid, then the other. "If he's my blood, then that must be the reason. Someone must have known…"

She trails off, biting her lip, and Leila remembers that both of her parents died young. If one of them strayed, the story is buried with them, hidden down deep with the roots and the bones.

"Someone chose us," Laurene says. Leila can feel her pulse beating fast as a bird's. "And whatever it is in my blood, it's in Cora's too."

Leila would swear that the lights flicker. It's the wind picking up outside, maybe, or a trick of the tears in her eyes. She pulls Laurene close again and kisses her, and Laurene kisses back. She tastes of beer and salt. Almost like summer. 

"The forest couldn't keep you," she says. "You're home. Cora's home, too. You raised a fighter."

Laurene lets out a long sigh. She curls her hands into the pockets of Leila's coat. "It's not over."

"Then let's take her away somewhere," Leila says. "Somewhere warm. Picture the three of us lounging on a beach. Oh, but you burn in the sun, don't you?"

Laurene manages something closer a proper smile this time. "Bright red," she says. "Maybe that's why I have to stay here. And you?"

Leila knows better than to say, _I stay for you._ It's not the whole truth, anyway. There's something to all those stories Sabine tells, something in the water, or the air, or those goddamned trees. Some magic power that Leila doesn't believe in and yet can't resist. "Maybe I like it here," she says.


End file.
